In the prior art, there is known a portable label printing/sticking machine, in particular, for use in food products or food materials. In this portable label printing/sticking machine, items such as a production date, an expiration date, a freshness date, and various items regarding freezing, thawing, heating, and other various treatment cautions and data such as dating for management or a specific date/time are printed on a label. If printer modules are individually provided for every item print or every data print, the number of the printer modules and the size of the printer modules increase disadvantageously. Therefore, it is necessary to provide a printer module equipped in the portable label printing/sticking machine within a limited range of the weight and the size. In particular, it is desirable to print each data regarding at least two types of independent items on a single label. For example, in order to print two types of items and corresponding data, generally, the printer module is required to have a total of four stages aligned in a vertical direction. This is not practical in actual use of the portable label printing/sticking machine.
For example, FIGS. 6A and 6B illustrate a typical example of two-stage print on a label piece 1. FIG. 6A is a top plan view illustrating the label piece 1, and FIG. 6B is an exploded view illustrating index letters and/or symbols of a data print band 2 for printing, for example, a horizontal four-digit code on the label piece 1. As illustrated in FIG. 6A, printing is performed on the label piece 1 using a vertical two-stage printer module (not shown) to indicate, for example, an expiration date from “December 1 (1201)” printed on an upper print section 3 to “December 2 (1202)” printed on a lower print section 4.
As illustrated in FIG. 6B, each data print band 2 is configured to print letters and/or numbers such as “1, 2, . . . , 9, 0” and “AM” or “PM” and other necessary symbols. However, the data print band 2 is configured to display, for example, thirteen letters or numbers due to constraints in the size or the weight of the portable label printing/sticking machine equipped with the printer module.
However, in the display printed on the label piece 1 of FIGS. 6A and 6B, naturally, it is necessary to separately print the “expiration date” or previously understand that such a print indicates the expiration date.
FIGS. 7A and 7B illustrate an example of a label piece 5 in which the “expiration date” can be seen clearly. FIG. 7A is a top plan view illustrating the label piece 5, and FIG. 7B is an exploded view illustrating index letters and/or symbols of an item print band 6 for printing an item such as the “expiration date” on the label piece 5. Note that the item print band 6 is wider than the data print band 2 to display items. In addition, similar to the data print band 2, for example, thirteen letters and/or symbols can be printed.
As illustrated in FIG. 7A, the label piece 5 has an upper print section 7, a middle print section 8, and a lower print section 9. Using a printer module (not shown) having three vertical stages, the “expiration date” is displayed on the middle print section 8 using the item print band 6, and “1201 (December 1)” printed on the upper print section 7 and “1202 (December 2)” printed on the lower print section 9 are displayed using the data print band 2 (FIG. 6B).
In particular, in a food product labeling system, the types of item prints such as a “freshness date” or “production calendar date” tend to increase in addition to the “expiration date.” Therefore, it is desirable to print each data, for example, for at least two types of independent items on the single label piece 1 or 5 depending on the number of item prints as described above.